“I haven’t,” I said as I finished up one of the thirty emails. “I’m also not engaging in this conversation with you.”
“Good. ‘Cause I don’t actually have anything to talk to you about. I only came in here to get a better view of Adrienne ‘I Was Secretly Hot Thi
s Whole Time’ Tan,” Josh said, chuckling at his own dumb joke right before cursing under his breath. “Goddamn, bro. You seeing this shit?”
I heaved a sigh as I glanced up, looking past Josh and at AJ, who was over by The Pit. She was smiling big, her dark hair spilling over her shoulder as she leaned over Liza’s desk, discussing something on Liza’s computer.
And as she did that, I took the time to fully process her look today.
I did this often enough, and pretty easily considering I saw her way more than any of these other clowns at work. I’d seen her at home in her pajamas before. Noticed the way her body looked in a fitted cotton tee. On pure instinct, my dick had definitely twitched that time I saw her at the hotel gym in Chicago.
All I remembered was a grey hoodie that cut off above the waist of her black yoga pants, and thighs so toned I’d been compelled to look for longer than a second as we walked past each other. “Gross,” AJ remarked, to which I’d snorted, and then we kept it moving.
Because that was generally what I did with her in these situations: Assess the difference. Catalogue it in my head. Carry on with my life.
But today was different.
Today, it wasn’t quite as easy to move on from looking at her, because I knew she looked the way she did specifically for Caspar, and while I had always known his weak ass didn’t deserve her, I was pretty sure I had the hard evidence now after seeing him outside a cafe on La Brea three days ago.
When he was supposed to be location scouting in Sydney.
As in Australia.
The lie itself would’ve been bad enough, especially since AJ had been waking up at a quarter to five all week just so she could call him before bed, but his shittiness didn’t actually stop there, because I hadn’t just seen him in LA.
I’d seen him with his hands stuffed into some girl’s back pockets.
And his mouth buried in her neck.
Christ.
The memory of the image made me grimace and curl my lip at my desk, because I’d already disliked this guy before all this—for always forcing AJ to tend to his needy ass, and for making her step outside to call him every twenty minutes when she was with me at work parties.
It didn’t help his case that he started every sentence he goddamned spoke with “as a filmmaker.”
But now I had a much realer reason to hate the little shit, and I was struggling hard with the decision not to tell AJ about what I saw.
So as Josh went on about some bullshit, I grabbed my phone off my desk and shot a quick text.
ME: You’re sure I shouldn’t tell her?
I attempted in vain to read an email as I waited for the reply, which took about twenty seconds.
HOLLAND: Yes. She literally spent her entire week getting ready to surprise him and you’re only 70% sure the guy you saw was Caspar.
I grimaced, rubbing the back of my neck as I read my little sister’s text.
Admittedly, with his stupid face buried so deep in other-woman neck and my car going sixty miles an hour, I hadn’t been able to confirm with total certainty that the blond douchebag with the man bun was in fact Caspar.
But he was about five-ten with a slight build and a T-shirt with Quentin Tarantino’s stupid face on it, so all signs seemed to be pointing in the cheater’s direction.
ME: Fine. But for the record it’s more like 76%
HOLLAND: Weirdly specific but my point stands. Don’t tell her.
My brow furrowed at her insistence, but just as I went to text my number two for his opinion, she texted again.
HOLLAND: Save it pal. Iain agrees with me.